On Thin Ice (11 page)

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Authors: Susan Andersen

BOOK: On Thin Ice
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“Have you ever had a sexual experience that was positive?”
“Well, . . . not really.” Her lips curled up in a forlorn little smile. “Isn't that pathetic? I mean, I've had sex and everything, several times with two separate guys, but I can't say that I liked it much. It sure wasn't the stuff you read about in books. Not awful or traumatic or anything—just something I sorta wanted to get over.”
Connie quit prowling the room and sat down next to her. “So if you've decided it's inevitable with Vinicor, why does the thought of doin' the deed with our good manager scare you so much? I mean, it's gotta be an improvement that he turns you on, doesn't it?”
“Yeah, you'd think so, wouldn't you?” Sasha turned her head to look her friend in the eyes, resting her cheek against her updrawn knees. “But I've got this need to be good at the things I do, and I'm not good at this. It's not even a matter of being
kind of
not good; I'm really lousy. I mean, Connie, here's this guy, he looks like he invented this stuff and it terrifies me when I think of the way he's going to look at me once the shoutin's all over. I've seen this look and believe me, it hurts. And jeez, Connie, if that isn't enough to send me into a spin, then there's Lon.” Her bark of laughter was tinged with hysteria. “Two more days and I'm going to be seeing him face-to-face for the first time in over five years. I still don't have the foggiest idea what my reaction to
that
is gonna be.”
 
 
She remained uncertain of her response right up until the moment she opened he door to her hotel room and saw Lonnie standing in the hallway. Then it was as if the five-year separation, the constant vacillation between feelings of hostility and remembered good times, had never been. Fingers pressed to her lips, all she had time to say was a trembly, “Oh,” before he hauled her out in the hall and into his arms to give her the granddaddy of all bear hugs.
“Hey ya, sweet thing,” he whispered into her hair. “Miss me?”
“Lon.” Sasha clutched him tightly for several moments. His hug, his scent, took her back, was a reassurance of things familiar. Finally pushing away, she held him off at arm's length. “Let me look at you,” she demanded.
Lonnie held his arms out from his sides, presenting himself. As she inspected him he inspected her in return, slow and thorough, looking for changes, noting things that had stayed the same. “Well, you're sure a sight for sore eyes,” he said with a grin. “Prettier'n ever, I see.”
“And you're still as full of sh . . .”
“Now, now.” Lonnie slung an arm over her shoulders. “Aren'tcha gonna ask me in?”
“Oh. Yes. Please, c'mon in.” They stepped into her hotel room and she closed the door behind them. Turning back to him, she was quick to assure, “No, really, Lon, you're lookin' good. I was half afraid you'd be all pale and skinny.”
“Nah. I got a little weather in the exercise yard. And I kept in shape with regular workouts—weights and stuff. Prison life does come with a few amenities.”
There it was, said out loud, the bald reminder that Lonnie's long absence from her life hadn't been the result of something simple or easy . . . like living in another state. Sasha looked away.
“Hey.” Lon reached out and pulled her chin back around with his fingertips. When their eyes met once again, he asked, “Is my incarceration gonna be a problem between us, Saush?”
“No, of course not,” she assured him quickly . . . too quickly. Her eyes slid away. Then she forced herself to meet his gaze once again and her chin tipped up fractionally as she shrugged. “Maybe. It's not the imprisonment so much; it's all the stuff that went into putting you there.” She hesitated and then admitted, “I've still got a lot of hard feelings, Lon.”
“Yeah, I s'pose you do. And I suppose you've got a right to them. But I'll tell you something, Sasha.” His eyes held a hardness she'd never seen in him before. “Things are never gonna be one hundred percent the same again, so you might as well get used to it. I just spent the last five years of my life locked away—that's a fact we can't tiptoe around.”
“I never suggested that we should,” she replied stiffly.
“No, you didn't. You'd just like me to avoid saying the word out loud instead, so you'll feel more comfortable.”
“Comfort be damned,” she snapped, furious that he should choose to put that interpretation on it. “Every time I'm reminded of where you've been, Lonnie, and
why,
my comfort zone's not the first thing that pops into my head.”
“Yeah? So, what
is?”
Feelings she'd been suppressing for years surged to the fore. “You really want to know?” she demanded. “I'll tell you what the first thing is.” Then she drew herself up, tamped those feeling down. She shook her head, taking a small step backward, as if to remove herself from the conflict. “No,” she said through tight lips.
“No.
I'm not going to do this. I am
not
going to fight with you.”
Lon ground his teeth in frustration. “Dammit, Saush, I hate it when you do that! I hate it when you get all prissy and controlled on me, like Sasha Miller's just too goddam angelic to brawl with the rest of us sinners.” He stuck his face close to hers. “Tell me what the first frigging thing that comes to mind is.”
She remained silent.
“Prison,” he taunted, thinking of her previous reaction to the word. “The Pen, the Big House, the Slam—”
“Anger,” she screamed and thumped him one on the chest. “Okay? You wanna know what my first reaction is when I think about what you did? It's pure, undiluted
anger”
They were standing close, nose to nose as they battled in the old familiar manner, a habit that had its origins way back in the days of their very first arguments. “Damn you, Lon, I'm so mad at you I could spit!” Her chest heaved with the force of her emotions as she stared up at him. “We had a
place.
For the first time in our lives, we had a place where we were accepted just for ourselves; where we didn't have to explain to anyone what makes us tick . . . or
apologize
for our very existence. And you screwed it up!”
“I screwed it up for
me!”
“Oh, and you think it didn't reflect on me? You think people believed I didn't know all along exactly what you were up to? God, I can't tell you how sick I got of being the goddam outsider again.” She placed her palm on his chest and gave him a furious shove. He was bigger and stronger than she; it merely rocked him back a step, and her control slipped another notch. “It was Kells Crossing all over again, you self-absorbed sonofabitch. The only difference was that this time nobody tried to grab my ass or feel me up!” Tears welled up in her eyes and spilled over, and she struck out at him blindly. “Damn you, Lon Morrison. Damn you, damn you, DAMN YOU! ”
He stilled her pounding fists by the simple expedient of grabbing her wrists and manacling them in one hand. With his free arm, he snagged her around her shoulders and hauled her up against him. “Holy shit,” he muttered, pressing her face to his chest. She shook with great, wrenching sobs. Holding her tightly, wordlessly, until the worst of the storm had abated, he finally pulled back a little and inquired, “So why the hell didn't you ever tell me any of this back then, Sasha . . . back when I was going through the arraignment and trial?”
“I don't know.” She wiped her nose against his shirt. “'Cause you had enough on your plate without heaping my problems on it, too, I guess.”
“Yeah, that's the Sasha we all know and love, all right,” he agreed with a humorless bark of laughter. “Wouldn't want to bother anyone with anything as inconsequential as fuckin' up her life.”
She dashed a hand under her eyes and glared up at him. “Would it have changed anything, Lon? Would it have kept you out of jail, or turned me into a damn Homecoming Queen?”
He looked down at her red-rimmed eyes and runny nose and dragged her over to the night stand by the bed. Pulling out a Kleenex, he extended it to her. “Here,” he commanded, “blow your damn nose. Jeez, you got snot all over my new shirt.” Watching to make sure she complied, he then pressed on her shoulders until her knees buckled and she collapsed onto the side of the bed. He squatted down in front of her and reached for her hands.
“No,” he answered seriously, staring up at her. “It wouldn't have kept me out of prison. And it was probably too late by then to win you any popularity contests. What it might have done, though, Saush,” he told her soberly, “was save your stomach more than five years' worth of wear and tear. Or are you gonna try and tell me you haven't been letting it eat at you all this time?”
She knuckled her eyes and scowled at him. “Don't flatter yourself, bud.”
Lon laughed. “You're right,” he said. “The Sasha Miller I know wouldn't have sat around brooding about it. Hell, you rebuilt your life, snagged the Silver at the Olympics, made friends and influenced people, and generally got on with it, just the way you've always done. It was probably only in the odd moments that it ate a hole in the lining of your gut.”
One corner of her mouth tipped up. “Yeah, that just about covers it.”
He rose to his feet and then sat down on the mattress next to her. Slinging a brotherly arm over her shoulders, he gave her a little squeeze. “I can't change what's gone before,” he admitted. Turning his head to look at her, he added, “What I can do, though; what I
will
do, Saush, is keep my nose clean from this day forward. I won't let you down again . . . I swear.”
His intentions were the best and he was totally sincere as he made the vow. He just didn't realize how hard it was going to be to keep that particular promise.
 
 
The phone was picked up on the third ring. “Hullo?” The greeting was offered in Ivan Petralahti's usual abrupt,
telephone-calls-are-a-nuisance
tone.
“Ivan?”
“Sashala!” His voice warmed by several degrees. “It hass been too long since we last spoke, my dahlink. How iss everysing with you?”
“Pretty good,” Sasha replied. “And how about you? I've missed you.”
They spoke in generalities for a while, catching up on the latest developments in both their lives, exchanging gossip from the figure skating world. Finally, knuckles whitening as she tightened her grip on the receiver, Sasha hesitated and then said, “I, uh, wanted to let you know that Lon is here. He's out of jail.” There was a frigid silence on the other end of the line and she rushed to fill it in. “He was paroled on the fourteenth and I got him a job with the Follies. In the line, that is—he'll be skating in the line.” She knew she was babbling, but her nerves were on edge, fearing his reaction.
Not without good reason. “Lonnie iss dead to me,” he said, and there was no doubting the finality in his tone. “I haff told you this before.”
“Ivan,
please
. . .”
“No, Sasha. I saw him through the trial but I told him then, as you well know, that that wass the end.” He was quiet for a few seconds and then burst out, “He had a bright future . . . and he threw it away. He sacrificed everysing—in- cluding, almost,
your
future—to make money from z'filthy drugs. No! He iss no more to me. We will speak of somesing else.”
And that was that. Sasha felt a sick clenching in the pit of her stomach. She needed so badly to be able to talk of Lonnie to Ivan; he was the only other person in the world who understood how it had been for the two of them in the old days, the only one who could possibly understand her conflicted feelings where her old friend was concerned. And what was that old saw about a problem shared being a problem halved?
But Ivan, whom Sasha secretly believed had to be similarly conflicted by the same opposing emotions that tore her apart, absolutely refused to discuss it. It was nothing new; she shouldn't be so disappointed. He had cut off that particular conversational avenue the day Lon was indicted, and clearly he was no more willing to reopen it now than he had ever been.
In a way, she even understood his hard-line attitude. Ivan was Old World, possessed of a rigid code of honor, and he held firm views and strong beliefs. But understanding didn't make it easier to accept. It would've made a world of difference to her if he'd been willing to at least listen while she worked through her own confused feelings. His frigid refusal to discuss it at all punished her right along with Lonnie.
She could feel him waiting for her to change the subject, and she knew that if she didn't the conversation would have to be terminated. Out of nowhere a bone-deep loneliness struck and she blurted, “I miss Mama.”
She hadn't known she was going to say that, but suddenly her sense of loss was overwhelming. It hit her the way it used to in the early days right after her mother's death, and she had a sinking feeling that the emotions were embarrassingly evident, coloring her voice.

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